I stopped writing and chewed the end of my pen. He had already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. There was no point in rehashing whether he knew the graffiti was there or not. No one cared about that anymore. I needed a fresh angle that I could only get with his input. What that fresh angle would be? I had no idea.
Shit.
I didn’t want to talk to him without a plan, but how did I come up with a plan when I had such limited information? We all knew the Immedi-Feed’s side of the story, but what was his?
I sighed and shut my laptop.
I felt the pressure to get this story right. When you’re a childless woman over forty, people expect you to either have one hell of a career, or a whole herd of cats. I had been single for so long that thinking about dating sites and dicks all day had me eager to put pajamas on and cry into a romcom.
None of the questions I had mattered, unless I could convince him to talk to me. But how?
I scanned through a few more articles, only finding more of the same information, when my eyes caught on something. Thename in the newspaper articles was Wesley Watson, but the name on the paper Heather had given me was Wesley Monroe.
Blood flooded my face at the sight of that name.
Up until I was around fourteen, I was neighbors with a boy named Wesley Monroe. He was a year older than me in school. He had been my first crush and my first kiss. Then he’d moved to Vancouver to live with his mom. We’d stayed in touch for a while, but within a year or two of him moving, we’d lost contact.
Surely this wasn’t the same guy? And why the name discrepancy?
Question: Is Wesley Monroe the same one I knew?
Chapter 2
Wesley
“Don’t feed ducks bread, it makes them sick. You’re supposed to feed them frozen peas.” Franny had told me this before, but I nodded anyway.
Agnes, Bill, Franny and Henry, who I thought of affectionately as the Fab Four, were sitting on their usual bench and feeding the birds while I prepped my tools for the repairs I needed to do on the seniors center. Today it was replacing some drywall after a pipe burst in the kitchen. It was basic grunt work and the pay wasn’t great. But after my life had imploded last year, I was grateful for the breadcrumbs – or frozen peas - of work that were thrown my way.
“Wesley, when are you going to meet my Rosie? She’s a good girl. You’d like her,” Franny said.
“Rosie is too old for him. What about that nice librarian at the public library? Joan? No, Joy?” Agnes asked.
“No librarians. We’re at the library all the time. What ifit doesn’t work out? You don’t crap where you eat!” Henry grumbled.
Agnes threw a pea at him.
“I appreciate your match making skills, as always. But I’m fine on my own.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing, son,” Bill said.
“Oh, leave him alone.” Unlike Bill, Henry was a lifelong bachelor and always came to my rescue when these conversations got too personal.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to meet someone.
I did.
But after the dreadedselfie-gateincident, I had a hard time trusting people. Besides, my life was a mess.
“A man needs a wife, and he can’t use the interwebs to find one. He needs our help,” Agnes told the group. She had all of the energy and pull of a cult leader without the resources.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be hearing this part of the conversation, so I went inside to get started on my repairs. I’d had my own plumbing business before I became public enemy number one. Once my story hit the news, no one wanted their house repaired by thesuck my cockguy.
My picture had been posted next to a text that said:there are plenty of fish in the sea, but this is the fish,and men wonder why women don’t want to get married.
The writing had been on the wall, so I’d sold my company and started over in my hometown of Springwood.
I first moved to Vancouver when I was in my teens to live with my mom. I still got along with my dad, but he had remarried and was busy with a new baby.
